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He sold a company to Google, worked at Meta and Spotify, was involved in the creation of Pokemon Go! and is now leading the development of new markets at Freepik as he lives between San Francisco and MalagaNuria Triguero
Malaga
Monday, 18 November 2024, 16:51
José Florido is a prime example of Malaga's "golden generation" of tech entrepreneurs, a group that includes other local experts such as Bernardo Quintero, Manu Heredia, Luis Hernández, Pepe Domínguez, Alejandro Blanes and his friend, business partner and current boss Joaquín Cuenca (originally from Alicante, but part of the Malaga tech scene).
These are (seemingly) ordinary people who, thanks to their talent, passion for technology and entrepreneurial drive, have achieved extraordinary feats- creating companies from scratch and selling them to Google or being sought after by Silicon Valley's tech giants.
Florido's CV includes big names like Google, Meta and Spotify, and for over a decade, he has lived in Berkeley, California, with his family, all of whom hold US citizenship. However, today, he works for a Malaga-based company: Freepik.
Florido has held the position of Chief Market Development Officer at the Malaga-based company for the past year and a half. In this role, he is responsible for market development at the company, which aims to become the global leader in AI-driven solutions to "democratise design and creativity". The primary focus of this expansion is the United States, where Freepik opened an office a year and a half ago to accelerate its growth in this highly competitive market.
Florido still considers Berkeley his primary residence, but now that he works at Freepik, he spends more time in Malaga. This year, his children started school here, although they will probably finish in the US. The family has always been somewhat nomadic: this summer, they were in China and they have also lived in Germany. As a result, their children speak four languages.
The reason Florido and his family have been based in Malaga for the past few months is that he has been leading the organisation of Upscale Conf, an event organised by Freepik. The conference will take place in Malaga this Tuesday and Wednesday (19 and 20 November), bringing together 500 people from across Europe to discuss the impact of generative AI on design and the visual arts. "We want it to become a leading event for Europe, and we were adamant it had to be held in Malaga," he said.
Florido left Malaga twenty years ago and now enjoys reconnecting with his city, which he said has "changed a lot". When he left, the city was a tech desert: there were only a few people working on their own projects (Uptodown, Agapea, Todocolección, VirusTotal) and the PTA (Andalusian Technology Park) was still in its early stages, with salaries barely reaching €1,000. "Anyone wanting to do something in tech had to move to Madrid or Barcelona, or even abroad," stated Florido, adding that it was "unthinkable to have a company like Freepik here".
Aware of the challenges caused by Malaga's rapid growth, such as the housing crisis, Florido chooses to have an optimistic outlook: "It has given many people the opportunity to build a career without having to leave. Not just in terms of the salaries, but by being able to work with cutting-edge technology, build a team and compete on the global stage," However, he said that there is still a long way to go: "We are still small; there is much more to be done to develop the ecosystem and reach the level of cities like Barcelona," he said.
José Florido is well-versed in the subject, as very few people in Malaga have a deeper understanding of how Silicon Valley and the tech giants operate. After all, he has worked for several of them. The first name on his CV is Google, a company he made history with through the legendary sale of Panoramio.
Panoramio, for those too young or too old to remember, was like a Wikipedia for the world in images - a collaborative project that captivated millions of photography enthusiasts around the world. It was created by three friends, Joaquín Cuenca, José Florido and Eduardo Manchón, without any investment. In 2007, a year after turning down their first offer, they sold Panoramio to Google and joined the international company.
Zurich was their first destination after the acquisition, but after three years, Florido moved to Mountain View with his wife, Ana Belén Ramos, who also worked at Google. Together, as well as being a couple, they have always been a creative and entrepreneurial duo: while at unviersity, they created a design and web development studio, and for the past ten years, they have co-led it; its name is Wepoke and they describe it as a "laboratory for web and mobile ideas and projects".
At Google's headquarters, Florido joined the Maps team. One day, the vice-president of this division, John Hanke, invited him to join a small group of six people working on something new: a project within Google called Niantic, which aimed to create augmented reality games using Maps. This was the seed that eventually led to Pokemon Go! "The first famous game we launched was Ingress, which was already very similar to what would later become Pokemon Go! but with aliens against humans," stated Florido.
Florido left Google before Niantic became an independent company (now worth 5 billion dollars) as he wanted to go back to being his own boss. Throughout his career, he has balanced working for large multinational companies with running his own projects. He spent eight years juggling Wepoke and raising his children, and in 2020, he decided to re-enter the job market. He made a big return as Facebook hired him as Product Design Manager in the Integrity team, a department that grew to 400 employees - from engineers to former CIA agents - dedicated to improving content moderation and responding to crises and fake news. The company was particularly concerned about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which had raised serious issues around data privacy.
Florido's time at Meta was brief, just a year and a half, before he was recruited by Spotify in 2022, but it was an intense experience nonetheless. "I had to go to Singapore for two weeks to cover the Philippine elections. We set up an office with a hundred people, and there was a huge screen where we monitored news to spot suspicious content," he said. In his role in the Integrity department, he also helped identify and report networks involved in human trafficking, fraud, paramilitary groups and child exploitation.
After dealing with these serious issues, the Malaga native moved to Spotify, a paradise for design and creativity where he also took a major step forward in his career by becoming Director of Product Design. He then left the company a year and a half ago to return (professionally, if not entirely physically) to Malaga, where he reunited with his friend and former Panoramio business partner Joaquín Cuenca.
At Freepik, Florido has found a balance between the scale of a large corporation and the agility of a startup. "It's a company with a strong culture, and although it's now a considerable size, it still allows me to be involved in high-level decisions while staying close to the user and the product. It retains the spirit of a startup, but at the same time, we're making an impact just like larger companies."
Florido highlighted the "incredible transformation" Freepik has undergone over the past year and a half. "We used to aim to be the world's largest collection of graphic resources, but now we're striving for something much bigger: offering people a completely new way to create content using technology and democratising design and creativity."
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